Interest in hiked university fees crashes website

Aleisha Orr

A website designed to give prospective students an idea of how much their preferred degree will cost if changes to university fees and loans go ahead, has crashed shortly after it went live.

Web users trying to access whatwillmydegreecost.com.au are currently arriving at a page with a message saying "This application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later."

Senator Lee Rhiannon said the site would give individuals the chance to estimate the direct financial impact of the changes by adjusting variables such as what course they study, their total student debt and their starting salary.

The government announced on budget night that it would cut its contribution towards the cost of university courses by an average 20 per cent, saving $1.1 billion over three years.

It will also reduce the annual indexation of its contribution, switching to the consumer price index.

To compensate the higher education sector, the government is allowing the universities to structure the fees they charge for different courses.

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Students borrow money from the taxpayer to pay for their course. These loan payments are expected to increase from $6.6 billion this year to $12 billion in 2018, a Department of Education spokesman said, with another 80,000 participants accessing the system for the first time and the impact of fee deregulation.

However, the Greens’ higher education spokesperson said modelling released by Education Minister Christopher Pyne was “significantly out of line with predictions in his own budget papers”.

Mr Pyne told News Limited that a typical university student would pay just $3- $5 a week extra in loan repayments.

"Rather than graduating with a very generous starting salary of $67,848 in 2019, as Mr Pyne predicts, his own department says graduates will only be earning 74.3 per cent of average male weekly earnings - or closer to $55,400*,” Senator Rhiannon said.

She also pointed out that budget papers estimate 30 per cent of graduates would not find work within four months of finishing university in 2017-18 and that Mr Pyne had applied "generous pay increases" to his hypothetical graduates.

Senator Rhiannon said Mr Pyne should also explain where his average starting salary of $67,848 was from “given that on average, nurses will graduate with starting salaries of $49,000 per annum, teachers with $55,000* and scientists with $55,000”.

In Parliament on Wednesday, Mr Pyne responded to questions about the fairness of the changes to fee structures,

He said the government was reforming higher education in Australia so "young people from all walks of life will get the opportunity to go to university".